January 2014 Grocery Challenge

Soworried · 3 January 2014 at 10:22AM

storytime wrote: »

Spent £27.89 at Sainsbobs yesterday. Only needed fresh food and used up the last voucher they sent me. I now have extra Nector points but have no idea what I do with them?

I save mine for birthday and christmas treats now

You can spend them when you have £2.50, just tell the cashier how much you would like off your total, £2.50, £5, £7.50 or £10 etc.

Soworried · 3 January 2014 at 10:32AM

lynnejk wrote: »

Put it in the coldest place you can find such as conservatory, shed, garage. Give it 4 hours a kg. Take out giblets as soon as possible. Check cavity free of ice crystals and cook as soon as defrosted. Hope you enjoy

Hope you all have a fantastic Friday
Lx

Thankyou :A, I have put it in water in the back kitchen and have no heat on in there. It seems to have hardly defrosted at all overnight.
I'm guessing It won't be ready to cook at anytime today by the 4 hours per kilo

I'm on a long shift tomorrow so I can't cook it then. Would it still be alright by Sunday morning? I will move it in to our shed.

xxlouisexx56 · 3 January 2014 at 11:24AM

£8.92 in M's yesterday.

Kitchen roll, bread, apples, pasta shapes and lots of whoopsies. Goose fat roast potatoes £2 down to 19p. Mash £1 down to 9p!

CherryPie · 3 January 2014 at 11:34AM

Chloris wrote: »

Snap! We are having mushroom and spinach lasagne for tea too!

This sounds lovely! As a fairly new veggie, I struggle with inspiration for recipes. If you have time, can you point me in the direction of a recipe?

Hopefully my 3rd NSD in a row today!

welshlovebiscuit · 3 January 2014 at 11:34AM

Returning after a year's absence... determined to save as much as possible this year coz we need work done on the house and have no money to do it!

Cupboards are pretty well stocked - hubbie gets a Christmas bonus (£250) and we use that every year to treat ourselves to a big shop and lots of goodies. There's £180 in the shopping account...I'd like to come in just under that at £130. That will be mostly packed lunch stuff and fresh fruit...oh, and cat food/litter ;-)

dumpling · 3 January 2014 at 11:41AM

Hi can I join this month please. I would like to be put down for £500.

This is for 2 adults, 2 teenagers (who are eating me out of house and home) 1 tween 1 dog and 1 cat. This is to include all food, takeaways, toiletries and cleaning stuff.

At the moment the cupboards and freezers are fairly full so I shall be trying to use up what we have so I can defrost and clean the freezers. I love this month when the world seems full of promise and challenges seem achievable

.

Coxy11 · 3 January 2014 at 12:10PM

Hi,

Just on quickly. Went to WR to collect an order - treated myself to a CathK handbag with my Xmas money :j - and I had a quick look around the shop. I got 2 x 4m rolls of wrapping paper at 75p each and a WR Belgian choc sponge pudding rtc for 87p - this will feed the 5 of us with a little cream/ice cream, as I imagine it will be very rich. There were lots left, also Hest0n Christmas puddings for £2 and other chocolate. We don't like Christmas pudding and have enough chocs left to last a while so I resisted!

So 87p spent from grocery budget and £1.50 from my Christmas budget.

Back later to update budgets

Coxy

mrs-moneypenny · 3 January 2014 at 12:18PM

CherryPie wrote: »

This sounds lovely! As a fairly new veggie, I struggle with inspiration for recipes. If you have time, can you point me in the direction of a recipe?

Hopefully my 3rd NSD in a row today!

look on the front page there are loads of fantastic recipie ideas there, i often forget about it but have had some brilliant meals made from those pages. (the quorn and leek pie someone put on is lovely -sorry cant recall the OPs name)

Chloris, your mushroom and spinach lasagne sounds lovely, ive not tried that combo

mooomin · 3 January 2014 at 12:25PM

I've been doing a lot of cooking from scratch this week - fritatta tonight and we've already had home-made fish fingers (delicious but what a faff to make!) and a chicken and chorizo gratin.

This weekend I have family in town, so it's likely that we'll be out for dinner a few times. That should help my food budget

BlueCow1975 · 3 January 2014 at 12:41PM

Well.......I was up until late last night reading this thread and am hugely inspired by all your efforts / tips and advice. I have never done this challenge before and I know that the grocery shop is a huge area of money wastage for us!

To some extent I think we are the supermarkets "dream" with no shopping list, no real meal plan beyond a day or 2 in advance and impulse buy all those interesting offers and none food items that all of a sudden become essential! I am worse for this in Ald !!

I am sick and tired of needing milk and bread, then coming out having spent £28. So - this is the time to do something about it!!!!! I have a great slow cooker and my in laws bought us an actifry for Christmas which will also come in handy.

So, meal plans, shopping lists and budgets are sooooooo the way forward. I suspect in reality if I added it up properly our family spend is around £500 a month which is absolutely ridiculous!!! So, for this month will go for £400 and see how I get on. As I get more into this would like to reduce it down even further.

So, BlueCow1975 £400

Really looking forward to getting control of this

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January 2014 Grocery Challenge

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